An engineer, a priest and a surgeon are playing golf one day, but they keep getting held up by a slow group ahead of them. Frustrated, they ask their caddie what's the problem with the slow group. The caddie explains, "Those are firefighters who lost their eyesight while saving orphans from a fire!".

Feeling chagrinned about his impatience, the priest says, "Oh, that's terrible, I'll pray for them." Not to be out done, the surgeon chimes in "I'll donate some time and see if we can repair their eyes."

Then, the engineer asks:"If they're blind, why can't they play at night?"

Optimist = The glass is half fullPessimist = The glass is half emptyEngineer = The glass is too big

Actually, the glass is just the right size. I prefer to spec double my estimated worst case scenario.

Funny but true in my case. Someone talking about "the weather" or their visit to the store is like nails on a chalkboard to me. And good luck finding a babe who wants to talk about neutron flux density or Wigner energy.

Hubby is an engineer, and knowing him and his co-workers/friends, plus my uncle and brother-in-law, I find this article to be complete and total crap. They're all really caring, devoted people. I can only speak for one, but based on that particular data all engineers are amazing lovers, too. :P

Pointy Tail of Satan:Funny but true in my case. Someone talking about "the weather" or their visit to the store is like nails on a chalkboard to me. And good luck finding a babe who wants to talk about neutron flux density or Wigner energy.

Crap. Me too. My wife will blather on about her day and all the utterly insignificant things that happened to her and how they made her feel. I have to sit there nodding my head like an idiot and pretend to care; beneath the surface, I'm screaming in pain and slowly dying from the soul-crushing mediocrity.

simplicimus:"The computing students, once gender effects had been eliminated, actually came out basically the same as medical and caring types: they had turned out to be normal, warm, caring human beings. It was in fact the physics-based classical engineers who were dead inside. "heh./computer engineer/dead inside, mostly

I find that hard to believe. You're talking about a bunch of people who spend a shiat-ton of time on places like 4chan.

Marine1:simplicimus: "The computing students, once gender effects had been eliminated, actually came out basically the same as medical and caring types: they had turned out to be normal, warm, caring human beings. It was in fact the physics-based classical engineers who were dead inside. "heh./computer engineer/dead inside, mostly

I find that hard to believe. You're talking about a bunch of people who spend a shiat-ton of time on places like 4chan.

Smeggy Smurf:As an architect I'd like to say engineers are always farking up our designs. Oh sure, NOW you want to put a column there.

At least I can make my elevations match my floor plans. Not speaking to you personally, but I've worked with a few different architects that couldn't seem to do it. And even worse, they became indignant when shown the problem.

/No, there's no bedroom there, it's attic. Look at it. LOOK AT IT, YOU MORON! SEE? DO YOU SEE???//Huh? No the floor plan governs. Read the specs.///Um...

WI241TH:Ethertap: I think what eroded my empathy more than anything was hearing business majors biatch that they couldn't get drunk on a Tuesday night because their "business calculus" class was to hard.

/chemical engineer

I thought me and my fellow chemical engineers were a very loving crowd. The weekly field trips to distilleries and breweries senior year helped, I'm sure, but cold and dead inside? no way.

My ChemE class was awesome, good group of people and just about all of us helped each other out along the way. That's why I tend to struggle with the engineers have no social skills part, those of us who work well in groups had a much easier time than the few who tried to do all the work alone. I'm not anywhere close to cold and dead on the inside, but I definitely fit the stereotype of the socially awkward technical guy.

Only 65.4% Dead inside, selling your soul to the oil and gas industry helps erase some of the deadness because of all the god damn fun I get to have...

"wait, so you're telling me, that you're giving me a multi-million dollar, several thousand barrel a day processing unit to play with?! and you're paying me?! YOU! Turn that valve.... :operator: Why?! :me: "just cause I can see what happens"

I am an engineer and I was married to an engineer for thirty years. My favorite part of being married to an engineer was that there was no project or problem too big to tackle. Plus, he'd talk dirty to me in Morse code.

sxacho:Smeggy Smurf: As an architect I'd like to say engineers are always farking up our designs. Oh sure, NOW you want to put a column there.

At least I can make my elevations match my floor plans. Not speaking to you personally, but I've worked with a few different architects that couldn't seem to do it. And even worse, they became indignant when shown the problem.

/No, there's no bedroom there, it's attic. Look at it. LOOK AT IT, YOU MORON! SEE? DO YOU SEE???//Huh? No the floor plan governs. Read the specs.///Um...

We're using Revit so that is impossible.

/roughly 98% accuracy rate between plans and elevations over the past 14 years//2% WTF was I drunk?

Gramma:I am an engineer and I was married to an engineer for thirty years. My favorite part of being married to an engineer was that there was no project or problem too big to tackle. Plus, he'd talk dirty to me in Morse code.

My dream was to marry a fellow Chem E. Sadly, that doesn't seem to be coming true.

I'm a mechanical engineer. I enjoy long walks on the beach, scratching trigonometric proofs into the sand with a large stick. I treasure the intimate conversations I hold with my computer, tossing my head back in laughter at the unexpected page fault error. And if it's warmth you're looking for, there's no one better at calculating thermal flux densities. So don't call me cold and insensitive, you four function math performing motherfarkers!

Nogale:I'm sure there are many engineers who are also loving, functional people. However, every guy I've ever been on a date with who was a complete social retard - as in unable to hold up his end of a conversation - was an engineer of some type. YMMV

SpiderQueenDemon:Doctors come in three flavors, Dr. Crusher, Dr. McCoy and Dr. Bashir. Bashirs are a little arrogant, Crushers have the best bedside manner, and McCoys typically wind up being the surgeons.

Gotta say, you're missing one that actually shows up in practice:"Please state the nature of your illness""I have a headache""Take 2 of these" *vanishes into thin air*

Chiming in to defend engineers. I work, and sort of backup, a ton of engineers and the device we build helps blind people see. I can tell that most of them work at my company because of the product (they ain't there for the money). It is kind of weird, though, that the engineers who seem the most "normal" either eventually leave and pursue completely different careers or they're young and stay to support their new families.

Another thing about them, they don't laugh at my good jokes. You can show them shiat your grandmother forwarded you, or some old cliche from a sitcom, and they'll laugh their nerdy asses off. Give them an Arrested Development joke, or something that's absurdist, and it's like you're talking some alien language.

Smeggy Smurf:As an architect I'd like to say engineers are always farking up our designs. Oh sure, NOW you want to put a column there.

Look, you idiots designed a hospital with no conduits for fiberline data, sterile O2/N2, potable water, or sewage. The column is the least offensive fix for that. If you had actually discussed what was going to be needed in the building with any of the medical staff (hired since after Rome fell) beforehand, the engineers wouldn't be trying to retrofit with a kludge like this.

I assume that this is some kind of satire, given the source and content, but I've got to say, this recent trend where some groups categorically declare others as unthinking and/or unfeeling is unsettling. Thought and emotion are essential human characteristics: are accusations like this not tantamount to dehumanization? As a society we've not yet gone into full-on memetic-cleansing mode, but I'm not sure jokes about this sort of thing are funny anymore.

WhippingBoy:two towns over: My job is a gaffer. A lighting guy, designer yes. The word is old english, anyway: some of my collegues say they are the "Chief Lighting Engineer" in their credits instead of gaffer. My question: are they right to claim engineer status?

No farking way.

See now, I'm a TV Engineer. Although I have an EE, I don't use much of it in this job. Just knowing how to pick up *any* manual, BS my way through it enough to design/order/build/operate/train almost anything @ a TV station may not make me a IEEE Engineer, but it damn well makes me a Broadcast Engineer.

\very few people that can debug a transmitter @ 3am while the GM whines over your shoulder\\and wire the whole place for HD, and keep those plans straight in your head

Worked at a chicken processing plant. Learned Chickens are dumb, and you wont get paid enough for some things.Worked as a office manager. Learned people suckWorked as a sales manager. Learned people are gullible, and I can be evil.Worked as QA on a nuclear waste containment system. Learned people lie.Worked as a software engineer for decades...learned that Computers dont lie, and they love me.Worked as a QA for software engineers. Learned that software engineers are idiots.

I dont know whether to be dead inside or loving. Its a mixture depending on the topic.

Currently doing server firmware automated validation, kind of a cross between a software engineer and a QA.

A cannibal entered the meat market to buy something nice for dinner. The owner greeted him and told him to look around. The cannibal began to inspect the meat case and noticed the market specialized in brains.Upon further inspection he noticed a marked disparity between the costs of brain meats. Engineer's brains sell for $1.50 per pound. He noticed with alarm that architect's brains sells for $10 a pound. With not a little curiosity he asked the owner why the huge difference in price between the similar meats.The owner responded with a deadpan look on his face, "Do you realize how many architects it takes to get a pound of brains?"

Worked at a chicken processing plant. Learned Chickens are dumb, and you wont get paid enough for some things.Worked as a office manager. Learned people suckWorked as a sales manager. Learned people are gullible, and I can be evil.Worked as QA on a nuclear waste containment system. Learned people lie.Worked as a software engineer for decades...learned that Computers dont lie, and they love me.Worked as a QA for software engineers. Learned that software engineers are idiots.

I dont know whether to be dead inside or loving. Its a mixture depending on the topic.

Currently doing server firmware automated validation, kind of a cross between a software engineer and a QA.

I currently manage a lab for QA and Dev engineers and learned that both are idiots.Not fair...actually, MOST are idiots. Some are geniuses.

WhippingBoy:Pointy Tail of Satan: Funny but true in my case. Someone talking about "the weather" or their visit to the store is like nails on a chalkboard to me. And good luck finding a babe who wants to talk about neutron flux density or Wigner energy.

Crap. Me too. My wife will blather on about her day and all the utterly insignificant things that happened to her and how they made her feel. I have to sit there nodding my head like an idiot and pretend to care; beneath the surface, I'm screaming in pain and slowly dying from the soul-crushing mediocrity.

I've gotten identical complaints from my mother and husband : "Why do you only want to talk about news and information? Why don't you want to talk about Real Life?" I'm still puzzled as to what that means but so far I have a theory conversations about Real Life concern gossip about people we may know, what happened with celebrities, food that has been recently eaten and food that will soon be eaten, what is on sale at the grocery store, endless rambling about relatives, and feelings. Also, sudden rants about things I hate and childish glee at news items about asteroids or archaeology finds are not considered talking about my feelings.

What they likely did was frame the questions such that a more rational person would have an answer that the researchers could spin as uncaring.

The questions can easily be set up such that they benefit medical careers and hurt others. For instance, government providing free medical care for the poor. This takes away what would be charity work for medical professions and makes it income producing work or at least covers costs. For everyone else, they have to pay for it. The rational thinking person, like an engineer who has to deal with costs and production and so forth knows that government payment didn't come out of ether, but instead means others have to do with less. Usually middle class people who have their own bills to deal with.

Another way is to make the questions such that more rational people can see the harm done, not just the obvious good deed. What Bastiat called the 'unseen'. The question is then scored based on the obvious good deed, not the harm done. For instance, something like cash for clunkers. The rational person sees what it does to the used car market down the road, hurting people of lower incomes. The obvious good deed is making new cars more affordable to people who otherwise might not be able to afford one.

Researchers like this, besides trolling likely simply don't understand the thought processes that engineering people use. The entire evaluation is tainted by their own ideas of what is caring. What they 'feel' is caring. They likely fail themselves to be able to see what is caring from another person's point of view.

Ultimately I find the medical profession's 'caring' to be really shallow. It's really a nasty money making machine that functions on manipulating people by creating the perception of caring while keeping them just sick enough to drain as much money out as they can.

SultanofSchwing:WhippingBoy: two towns over: My job is a gaffer. A lighting guy, designer yes. The word is old english, anyway: some of my collegues say they are the "Chief Lighting Engineer" in their credits instead of gaffer. My question: are they right to claim engineer status?

No farking way.

Why not? What part of their job precludes them from referring to themselves as an engineer? You don't have to have a P.Eng or a license to be called an Engineer in the strictest sense of the word.

two towns over:My job is a gaffer. A lighting guy, designer yes. The word is old english, anyway: some of my collegues say they are the "Chief Lighting Engineer" in their credits instead of gaffer. My question: are they right to claim engineer status?

In the US when you graduate with an engineering degree from an accredited program, a potential employer or other interested party knows that you have been exposed to the engineering fundamentals associated with your specific degree. Those fundamentals are set by ABET and include topics like thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, material science, heat transfer, dynamics, mechanical design, mechanics of materials, etc. (For mechanical engineering.) This is in addition to core classes common to most engineering degrees: mathematics, physics, chemistry, various social sciences and humanities.

Personally I don't care who gets called an engineer, except that it add to the noise when looking for new contracts.

Oh yeah: I save the love, warmth and compassion for those who deserve it.